


The Shal-Mari Derby is Decadent and Depraved

by joyeusenoelle



Category: In Nomine
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-03
Updated: 2014-08-04
Packaged: 2018-02-11 13:15:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2069628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joyeusenoelle/pseuds/joyeusenoelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>JG covers the first run of the Shal-Mari Derby for the Media.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For @byzantienne.

The City is taller than I remember it when the train pulls in. It’s one of the new interdomain bullets. I hear Vapula funded the construction; rumor on the train is that the rails are human souls forged into faux iron. Not a particularly economic use of human souls, but the realm does have a glut of them. 

The station is crowded, lots of local tourists gawking at the trains as they pull in. You’d think demons would be better about this, but there are just as many fledged Balseraphs as there are imps and gremlins. I push my way through the crowd to the exit. The City looms over me like something out of a Gibson novel and I resolve then and there to not spend a minute more than I have to here without a drink in me. There’s a bar not far from where they built the station, if twenty years hasn’t soured my memory, so I forge on ahead. My luggage can wait.

A Calabite wanders up to me at the bar. He’s fat and more disheveled than they tend to be. No Earth duty for a while, unless I miss a guess. “In town for the race?” I nod. “Too late. The seats are all booked up.”

I tap the press pass on my shoulder bag. He takes a minute to focus on it, and then his eyes widen. “You’re not really, are you?”

I shrug. “Pass says I am. Who cares?” I lift my hand and the bartender’s there, putting another shot in the glass. I down it in one swallow and he refills me.

“You’re not gonna get in with a fake pass. They’ve got Gamesters at the gates.”

The Game? Fuck. That changes everything. I turn my eyes to him. “Who told you that?”

“Common knowledge. They’re advertising it.” He points to a flyer stapled to the door. Sure enough: TICKETS VERIFIED BY ORDER OF ASMODEUS. 

“Well,” I say, and then down another shot. “Truth is, I am with the Media. Not through the Man himself, but, you know. Hired me to write a piece on the race.” I side-eye him quickly. “You haven’t seen a Habbalite around, have you? Six feet, pins in his scalp like he’s a goddamn Cenobite?”

“The fuck is a Cenobite?” the Calabite asks, and I nod. With my luck Reader’s stuck on a late train. No big deal, though, as long as he’s here by tomorrow.

“Don’t worry about it,” I tell the Calabite, and buy him another round. “Who’s in town for the race?”

“Fuck, everybody.” The Calabite looks at me. He can barely focus. “I got friends coming in from War, from Technology, from… from everywhere.” 

“Tell ‘em to be careful,” I say, lowering my voice. “It’s the first race. You know someone’s gonna try something.”

“In Shal-Mari?” The Calabite pulls back and squints at me. “Who’d try something here?”

“Who wouldn’t?” I ask. “Factions and Media both have a stake here. Who wouldn’t try to take them down a peg? Especially them?”

“Goddamn,” he says, “I gotta tell people.”

“No, keep it quiet.” I sip another shot. The bar might be processed shit but the bartender is excellent. “Don’t want to cause a riot, you know?”

He taps the side of his nose. It’s a human thing I’ve seen other demons do. “You got it. We’ll just be careful, you and me.” 

“And anyone you care about.”

He sticks his hand out so I can shake it. I do. “Seamus,” he says. “And you?”

Well, fuck. Now I know his name.

“JG,” I say, and smile as hard as I can.


	2. Chapter 2

There are two major schools of thought in Hell regarding intoxicants. The first says to avoid them. Drugs are toxins; they reduce the level of control you have over yourself, and Hell is all about control. The second, for exactly the same reason, says to take as many drugs as you can. You had no control over how you were made or how a given glued-on Force will affect you, but drugs let you subvert your shape and your creator’s intent. They have a predictable effect on the soul and the self which allows you to be and experience something you were never built to be or experience. It’s the ultimate expression of control. 

The evangelists for the first camp are the worst. Outside every bar, every hash joint, every opium den or meth lab there’s a Balseraph poised to tell you how you really don’t need the drugs you showed up to take -- well, every one that hasn’t driven them off. They see no irony in it, especially not the Balseraphs; they’re convinced they should be in charge anyway.

I’m in the second camp. My form of evangelism is demonstrative. The LSD they’ve developed down here isn’t quite the same stuff as you get on Earth, but it has the same effects. I make sure, as I’m leaving the bar, that everyone sees me put a tab on my tongue. It’s not going to help me find my hotel, but what the fuck. I’m back in Shal-Mari for the first time in fifteen years and I might as well enjoy the sights.

When people who haven’t been to Hell think of the kind of cities we have here, they think of slums and tenements, muddy streets that are little more than cartways, crooked buildings and rotting signposts. It’s a very European mindset. It makes sense, I guess; from what I’ve been told, Heaven’s cities are very European and feel like you took Paris and Rome and spruced them up a bit. And it’s true that in some places in Hell you do find the shitholes most people imagine.

Shal-Mari is what happens when you take the glitziest parts of Tokyo, New York, Shanghai, and Beijing and slam them all together. When we say “skyscraper” we don’t fuck around; there are a pair of developers competing to build the tallest building in Hell, and in the optional gravity down here they’ve managed to hit two and a half miles. I hear the elevator takes better than twenty minutes to get to the top floor. And the city doesn’t bother with subtlety in its advertising either. Shal-Mari’s main drag is a wall of neon, and in the last fifteen years it seems like they’ve added LCDs and LEDs to the mix. Being there sober is enough to give someone attention deficit.

With the LSD in my system it’s like a fireworks display declared war on me. I don’t realize I’m sitting down until my ass is on the sidewalk. Rockets are leaping past me in a garish display of marketing ebullience. With the help of a friendly lamp-post I make my way back to my feet, and stumble along, dodging attack ads and generally making my way toward the hotel. This is the down side of my particular brand of control: the drugs are predictable in a predictable environment. I thought I knew Shal-Mari, but Shal-Mari’s forgotten me. One sign comes at me like a freight train, just as fast and heavy, just as unavoidable, and for a moment I look up and see stars in the sky.


End file.
